The real test: Application performance
Now for the real test: actual applications one might run on a Phenom processor. We've used a number of elements of our usual CPU testing suite. If you're not familiar with them, we introduced them more properly in our original Phenom review. We'll dispense with the pleasantries here and give you the results.

As we predicted, the TLB patch's influence on performance varies from one application to the next. Everything depends on how that application uses memory. The largest impact, by far, is in the Firefox test, which really takes a hit when the patch is present. Web browsing isn't exactly an uncommon activity, either. In other tests, like the Sandra multimedia benchmark that uses SIMD instructions to generate a picture of a Mandelbrot fractal, the patch barely slows performance at all.